I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • Uncontested.

    My brother and I have been writing about our feelings or the lack thereof with our father, there is still something I am missing in our dialogue.

     

    When I wrote the second time, I was addressing the fact that my brother was disappointed with the kind of father he had.

     

    We also talked about my usage of the words dad and father when speaking about this man and it opened up another point. 

     

    What is the meaning of dad and father?

     

    Dad – an informal word for father.

     

    Father – A male person whose sperm unites with an egg, resulting in the conception of a child. b. A man who adopts a child. c. A man who raises a child.

     

    While reading them, the last part is where he failed; he didn’t raise us, he lowered us. 

     

    My brother would like me to write the word dad (dad) to emphasize the lack of being one. Or perhaps use biological dad.

     

    For the past 4 ½ years when I would speak of my father I would call him by his name, I could no longer referenced him with dad.

     

    It would be nice if there was a new term for this, for a man who lowers his kids, who makes them less than who they are.

     

    The word dad was like a swear word to me, like a mouth full of disappointment, and my tongue couldn’t form the word to slip it past my lips, it had broken my heart.

     

    His formal name came easy, it ripped the title from his back.

     

    It seems like a betrayal to yourself as a child, to use that name for someone who hasn’t acted like a dad, but rather used the dad term for priveledges of a sick disease.

     

    In fact I had read somewhere that pedopiles who abuse their own children are seen as lazy, for they don’t even have the energy to leave their homes. 

     

    You see some pedophiles don’t have home grown little girls, they have to construct elaborate ways to have the opportunity to be with little girls.

     

    I guess that makes sense and it makes us seem like we were grown for a set purpose and then became residual garbage.  No wonder my brother feels so useless, he wasn’t even ‘special’ for a short period of time.

     

    I felt this odd jealousy or a oneupmanship between my brother and I.

     

    Is it better to feel used, abused and damaged or to never be seen at all?

     

    About six years ago I read a book, “The Hidden Messages in Water,” by Masaru Emoto and here is a portion of what he says.

     

    I have the impression that the act of looking at water crystals is an act of creating life.  This is because when you look at the crystals, the water changes its appearance moment by moment.  Your gaze has a special energy of its own, and while a gaze of good intentions will give courage an evil gaze will actually take it away.

     

    A family that subscribed to our magazine conducted an interesting experiment.  They put rice in two glass jars and every day for a month said “Thank you” to one jar and “You Fool” to the other, and then they tracked how the rice changed over the period.  Even the children, when they got home from school, would speak these words to the jars of rice.

     

    After a month, the rice that was told “Thank you” started to ferment, with a mellow smell like that of malt, while the rice that was exposed to “You Fool” rotted and turned black.

     

    I wrote about this experiement in the book that I published, and as a result hundreds of families throughout Japan conducted this same experiement for themselves.  Everyone reported the same results.  One family tried a variation of the experiement: like the others they said “Thank you” to the first bottle of rice and “You fool” to the second bottle, and then they prepared a third bottle of rice that they simply ignored.

     

    What do you think happened?  The rice that was ignored actually rotted before the rice that was exposed to ‘You fool.’  When others tried this same experiement, the results were again the same.  It seems that being ridiculed is actually not as damaging as being ignored.

     

    To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy.  The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.

     

    I think this experiement has the potential to teach us a very important lesson.  We must take care to give our children our attention, and to talk to them.  Speaking words of kindness and love should begin from the time of conception…..Masaru Emoto.

     

    This book came to mind immediately and I recalled this experiment, but what I didn’t recall was the one jar of rice that was ignored.

     

    So in the oneupmanship, my brother wins.  He rotted first.  I never knew that they hurt worse.  Wow.

     

    Being abused you get attention, which is better than none at all.  I know this has to be why we feel guilty, for we wanted the attention so bad. 

     

    Imagine what we do to just get attention, to just be seen, just so we are not ignored.

     

    Neither one of us can call him dad, we both feel the title doesn’t fit, I just wish there were a title that did.

     

    What do you call a man like our father?

    What term can possibly fit that?

    Estranged father?

    Ex-Father?

     

    I looked up divorce from father, and while glancing at the different sentences, one word caught my eye.  Uncontested.

     

    What I feel most is that he didn’t contest his worthiness as father, he didn’t protest at all, how sad to find not one place where we could call you dad.

     

    The scales tipped uncontested.

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  • I Held Up Me.

     

    My brother’s blog, www.messyguru.typepad.com spoke of his disappointment of my father, well our father.

     

    How will a child ever be happy or content with a pedophile for a father, having a serial abuser for a parent, and feeling proud, is that possible?

     

    There is such disappointment and such a falling of pride to discover that your father is a pedophile, that your father has ruined many a life, destroyed self-esteem, self love, stolen faith and love from many a small girl, not to mention the lack of being a father to his sons.

     

    It is so huge to grab onto, to stand up against the volume of pain that one man caused, and we have to call him dad.

     

    We have to call him dad and be related to a man who reigns terror upon little girls, the meanest of all men, the one who in prisons get killed, his crime is the worst of the worst, and we have to call him dad.

     

    That is preposterous at best, insane and beyond what a child can hold no matter what his age.

     

    We have a father, but a father that isn’t a father by definition, but we can’t exchange him for another, and that leaves us dirty by association.

     

    In fact my brother was astonished that I used the term dad or father, for I haven’t really used that term much, I resorted to calling him by his first name, like he no longer was my dad.

     

    What do you do with a pedophile for a father, you are left with something that has no hope of becoming better.

     

    It seems like we were the winner of the worst father ever, a man that murderers feel justified in destroying, and the rest of the planet would cheer.

     

    That is our dad.

     

    And then it gets worse, for he had a wife, she is our mother, she stood by this man, well not only stood by, but protected and built him up into something he could never attain, never letting go of the image of her first love.

     

    The two role models we have are tarnished, broken, shattered and a crumpled mess. That is what we have.  We cannot change them, it is the hand we were dealt.

     

    When you are standing before your family tree of insanity, seeing, really seeing what is standing there, what choice do we have but to then look down at where we stand.

     

    Then who am I?

     

    What you fear the most has been realized, what we hated most in them was lying deep inside of us.  Our worst secrets lay bare.

     

    It is a selfish response to take the focus off of them and instead shine the microscope inside, yet what courage that takes.

     

    To shine a bright light and expose all the fears you overlooked, all the feelings left unfelt, all the places where you just never took the time or effort to think a new thought.

     

    Inside of you lay years and years of places where you could have should have would have done better.

     

    A vault of all your sins, a well of remorse, and now you have to pick up each morsel and correct where you were so wrong.

     

    To hold up a father and find a pedophile, leaves you breathless and without center post.  To then pick up a mother and find no love and comfort there leaves you weak and alone.

     

    To then turn in the mirror and see yourself in all your glory leaves you empty and dead, it is then you get to rebirth your self, define your self, not by where you came from but instead by where it is you are going.

     

    Perhaps the biggest disappointment is with the self to know that all your efforts were to support insanity.

     

    I didn’t know if I could turn a 360, to take a sharp turn to get out of the rut, but I knew that who I was in the mirror was not someone I could be with.

     

    I recall telling Paul, “at least you can walk away from me, but she is me, I can’t leave!”

     

    I killed that girl with the mental mind, one step at a time, It was not a merciful death, but painfully slow, and it seemed she had a million lives, for just when I thought, whew that is the last mental mess I have to untangle, she would burst fourth and take hold of me once again.

     

    Perhaps it was being witness to what would happen if we did nothing but stand in the forest of insanity that gave us the courage to at least try.

     

    For like my brother said, his father didn’t even try.  Nor do I think our mother made any attempt except to forgive his weakness.

     

    So it was by their example of not trying that I found my willingness to at least try.  I guess she taught me well to hold up the hopeless, in the end I held up me.

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  • A little boy.

    What do you write, say or feel towards a man you have known your whole life?

     

    The reason he came into my awareness again is that it is his Birthday today, my father turns 83 I believe.  I have lost track of time in his life.

     

    When I decided I would write about him, I sat waiting for feelings to come up, I have been asking myself what do you feel towards him now.

     

    There seems to be an empty cavern within me, a silence and vacancy of feelings, it is not indifference but the absence of rage.

     

    The last time I seen him was the fall of 2004, I recall touching his shoulder and feeling relief as they drove away heading south for the winter. 

     

    Like an obligation was over.

     

    I tucked away the sense of guilt that followed, embracing instead the space I would have not having to go there, it was getting harder and harder to be around them.  I no longer had to come up with excuses with the kids to not go to Sunday Dinners.

     

    At the time, I had no one thing I could point to and say this is the reason I want to separate from my family, but I had become unenthused seeing them.

     

    Something was changing within me and I was finding it harder and harder to pretend to feel connected to them or even the wanting to try.

     

     

    Inside space was already moving and growing, the space I would need to take such bold steps.

     

    I felt terrible that my feelings were freedom as they drove away, and I am not sure I spoke it out loud, in shame I kept silent.

     

    As the news broke, as my feelings were justified, I knew to the dept of my being I would never see that man again.

     

    It was like a long struggle was over and now I simply had to clean up the mess.  And what a mess it was, but I felt strong in an odd way and I had a clear focus.

     

    The fight within me was over, the fight between love and fear.  In the end fear won, fear was justified fear was reality and I was no longer having to force love.

     

    Forcing love when fear stood in its place.

    Trying to push reality over.

    What great relief to go with reality.

     

    His was such an unnatural love, so twisted I can’t even wrap my mind around it, nor can I pretend to understand his feelings.

     

    If I had to choose who I would rather be him or I, it is no contest I would be me.

     

    I was forcing myself to love a hurtful being and he was hurting a loving one.  I was trying to make innocent a man who wasn’t and he was making wrong the innocent.

     

    We are opposites and my path is easier.  Thank you dad for taking the path you took and for giving me the easier one.

     

    I guess in the end, that is what dad’s do, they spare the child and they take the rougher road.

     

    I always hear, who in their right mind could do such a thing.

     

    What I know for sure is that your mind isn’t right, there is a major disconnection going on, you are lost behind your addiction your disease, lost and alone.

     

    I cried for you in the first hours of your discovery knowing you would die a very lonely man.  I know this more than ever.

     

    Beneath the messed up mind, behind the mountains of dysfunctional abuse, sits a little boy lost.

     

    You and you alone have to make the journey back to him.

    I can love the little boy, but I fear the mental mind that stands in front of him.

     

    I am not certain if you will be free of that mind in this lifetime, or why your soul choose this journey, but for some reason I was set free. 

     

    This is my lucky lifetime.

     

    I wish it were yours.

     

    My Birthday wish for you is to become free of that mind, to find your spirit self, to embrace love, peace and joy, to be once again a little boy.  Happy Birthday Dad.

      

     

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  • Equal In My Eyes.

     

     

     

     129

     

    What is the difference between hollering and verbal abuse?

     

    What is verbal abuse? 

     

    Well I looked up the definition of Verbal Abuse.

     

    Psychology A form of emotional abuse consisting of the use of abusive and demeaning language with a spouse, child, or elder, often by a caregiver or other person in a position of power.

     

    So hollering becomes abuse when the one doing the hollering is in the position of power or caregiver, hence parents.

     

    I know for a fact that what I used to call ‘hollering’ was verbal abuse, I was the person of power.

     

    I looked up the word ‘demeaning’ to see if what I was hollering about was ‘demeaning’.

    Demeaning. Humiliate and degrade: to reduce somebody to    a much lower status in a humiliating way.

    To reduce someone to a lower status, wow hollering makes him or her lower.  I also felt the guilt, but this puts a name on the feeling.  I was lowering their sense of status in our home, by hollering for them to do their jobs.

     

    We could split hairs and say, hollering at them to clean up isn’t demeaning, but what we fail to notice is that they are our equals.

     

    We have neither right nor power to subjugate them to feeling less then us.

     

    What I came to learn was that by making them equal I gave them back their responsibility.

     

    Yesterday, I had a prime example of this interaction.  My daughter who is in college now, but living at home, wanted to just study all day.  What a sassy child you are all thinking, but what we expect from each, is not only to do well in that part of their world, but also to contribute to living here.

     

    So, we had a conversation, each of us stating their side.  I truly commended her on doing her life so well, but that she forgot to leave time for contributing for her living.  She suggested that I do all the work, since she was so busy and I had a day off.

     

    She has homework time, boyfriend time, but no “taking care of her living” area time.  Time management was her issue; she forgot to include cleaning up house time.

     

    We have offered to accept money instead of time, but they all decided time was cheaper to give. 

     

    I addressed the issue of her noncontributing, that it was to raise her up to my level, not to keep her beneath.  To show her that there is more to living than just schoolwork and a boyfriend, but to also be responsible of her living space.

     

    I stated, “I could do your part, but that isn’t fair to you, you need to feel that you are a contributing part in this house, and it surely isn’t fair to me to carry your weight.  It is abuse in the opposite direction to make you useless.”

     

    It is sad to know that so many of the hollering mom’s believe that they are hollering to make the children be more, yet what they are doing is bringing them down. 

     

    Whittling away at the Bright Spirit that they arrived as.  We ironically whittle them down to our own dysfunctional size.

     

    Lowering their status, keeping the scales unbalanced, keeping them feeling less and less, neither of us feeling good when the hollering is done.  We both are losers, we both feel less.

     

    But what we fail to realize or have the tools to implement, is that we must  bring our children up to our equals.

     

    How often do you see someone holler at his or her equal? 

     

    How do you feel after you have been hollered at?

    Does it raise your sense of wholeness, your brightness, and your rightness?

     

    Hollering is sugar coated verbal abuse.

    Hollering makes it seem less to the hollering person.

    Call it what you will, but in the end, it lowers the status.

     

    It is our job or responsibility as parents to raise our children, not lower them.

     

    What I knew was that this abuse had to stop, and I had to be the one to stop it.  It was up to me to save my kids from me!

     

    I had to be the change. 

     

    I had to focus on raising them and to do that, I had to raise the bar, raise the consequences, and make them an equal in my eyes.

     

     

  • A Present To Open!

    “Our relationship with the Present Moment defines our relationship with life itself”

                  Wayne Dyer

     

    The connection between how we relate to this moment is how we relate to life overall.

     

    How do you greet each present moment?  Do you find it bountiful or lacking?

     

    When the moment arises and presents itself to you, how do you react, what do you say to it?

     

    With each breath we take a new moment arrives, and how do you welcome it?

     

    What happens if we dismiss this time, if we are too busy planning for a time in the future, a present moment in the future, what happens to this time right here right now standing in front of you?

     

    What happens if you ignore this moment, turn a blind eye to the Now, planning on how you will or will not behave or be taken care of over there?  What happens to this little moment of newborn time standing here?

     

    The old saying “Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves,” is the same with seconds of time.

     

    If you take care of how you greet each second in time, your whole life will take care of itself.

     

    We can only live our life one second at a time, we can’t spend in the future and we can’t get back the past, those seconds we already spent or are not here yet.

     

    How many people are holding their breaths, enduring for the moment for a Heaven to come?  Folks working in jobs they hate for a retirement in later years, women married to a man who they hope will change in some distant future, mothers waiting for their children to grow up and away so they can have the freedom to be?

     

    It seems people are holding themselves hostage, kidnapping their lives today for a better life tomorrow.

     

    How does that work?

     

    I know that I used to be holding my breath wishing time would speed up and free me from my predicament.

     

    How backwards is that?

     

    Blaming time for going so slow, like how am I going to live like this for that long of time, never once thinking that I could be spending my time doing something I love, then time would be immaterial. 

     

    It isn’t time to blame, but how you spend your time.  Can you really blame time for your unhappiness?

     

    Time passes by, present moments go by you as you are holding life hostage for a better tomorrow, insanity at its best.

     

    Like ignoring this precious moment in time, stuffing it full of things you hate, so that you can live a better life eventually.

     

    What happens to yourself while you do this?  Can you really stuff full a life of discourse and anger, resentment and hate and come up with a wonderful retirement or freedom in some distant place.

     

    Isn’t it like taking the trip to a wonderful Island Resort by paddling an inner tube across the ocean to get there?

     

    Is the journey of suffering worth the reward at the end?

    Can we toss aside billions of present moments and call it a life well lived?

     

    Imagine how many present moments there are in each day, in a week, a lifetime!

     

    It overwhelms me in the sheer number we get and we do nothing for them.  They simply arrive, a present to open!

     

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  • The genes of Me!

    Your Lingering Early Programming – “Excuses Begone”

     

    In addition to our genetic makeup, the other big excuse that most of us use to justify unhappiness, poor health, and lack of success is the family and cultural conditioning we’ve been programmed with.  To that end, there’s a fascinating area of inquiry known as memetics, which deals with the mind and is analogous to the relationship of genetics to the body.  So as the basic unit of genetics is the gene, the basic unit of memetics is the meme (rhymes with “team”).  Yet unlike an atom or an electron, the meme has no physical properties.  According to Richard Brodie, in his work Virus Of The Mind, it’s ‘a thought, belief, or attitude in your mind that can spread to and from other people’s minds.

     

    Richard Dawkins, the Oxford biologist who coined the word meme, describes the process in his book, The Selfish Gene.  My understanding is that memetics originates from the word mimic, meaning to observe and copy behavior.  This behavior is repeated and passed on and on the mimicking process goes.  The key point is this:  transferring an idea, attitude, or belief to others is done mentally.  We won’t find memes by turning up the magnification of any microscope – they pass on from mind to mind via hundreds of thousands of imitations.  By the age of six or seven, we’ve all been programmed with an endless inventory of memes that act very much like a virus.  They aren’t necessarily good or bad; they simple spread easily throughout the population.

     

    Once a meme is in your mind, it can and will subtly influence your behavior.  This is one of the ways you acquire a huge category of excuses that keep you in a rut.  For example: My memes made me do it!  I can’t help it!  These ideas (beliefs, attitudes) have been passed on to me from one mind to another for generations, and there’s nothing I can do about the way I think. These memes have been building blocks of my mind, and I can’t deprogram myself from these viruses of the mind that just keep replicating and spreading.  These ideas (memes) are so much part of me that it’s impossible to ‘disinfect’ myself from the results of all of these mind viruses.”  Every excuse you read about in this book is, in reality, a meme that was once planted in your mind.

    (Wayne Dyer)

     

    How exciting is all of this?  It shows and explains how it is possible to ‘change your habitual mind’.

     

    The potential to rehabilitate our selves from childhood trauma is huge.  As I was walking away from my family I was changing my memes.  The selfish gene should really be called the self-loving gene.

     

    This is proof to me that when a mother changes and finds inner empowerment, so do her children.

     

    I intuitively knew that if my mother had taken a strong stance, it would enable her children to follow suit.  And I also knew that I didn’t walk alone, but that my children, my daughters especially, stepped in my footprints. 

     

    To be the change in this genealogy or memealogy takes huge amounts of will, for you are going up against the folks who raised you, supported you, and who we call family.

     

    In order for you to change your memes you alienate yourself from so many, you become someone they do not know, an enemy in the family.  You no longer mimic their thoughts, their beliefs and their actions.  You are the renegade.

     

    Seeing the written words that explain how I changed my ‘habitual mind’ astounds me.

     

    This also explain peer pressure, the mimicking factor that you are who you hang with!  “Birds of a feather flock together.”

     

    I love that I have a new vocabulary to explain what seemed so hard to articulate, “I changed my memes!”

     

    Wayne pronounces it Meam to rhyme with Team.

    I would like to call them ME ME Genes.

     

    The genes of Me!

      

     

     

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  • Will to Erase the Excuse!

    “An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie….”

                 Alexander Pope

     

    Wayne Dyer writes in his book Excuses Begone,

     

    There’s statistical evidence that the conscious mind occupies approximately 5% of the total workings of the brain, leaving 95% to the realm of subconscious. Percentages interest me less than the ability to sense your mind as some amorphous component of your being that’s constantly changing from one ego-based thought to another, but rather as evidence of your nature, or your connection to the infinite intellect of creation.  This style of magnificent respect alerts you to your ability to access the highest function of your mind.

     

    According to Tor Norretranders, the author of The User Illussion, the subconscious mind has been calculated to process millions of environmental stimuli per second versus only a few dozen environmental stimuli per second that the conscious mind can process.  Conventional psychological wisdom says that much of what you believe about yourself, along with almost all of your daily actions, is programmed into your subconscious or habitual mind.  You spend a great deal of your time operating on automatic pilot, so to speak.  In fact, you could visualize your two minds as co-pilots:  the conscious mind is aware of its thoughts but is a minor player, like a real pilot in training; while the subconscious takes care of virtually everything you need to think, say and do.

     

    I take exception to this assertion that the habitual mind runs the show, doing everything that the creative mind isn’t paying attention to.  According to this view, the habitual mind is like a computer running a downloaded program that will play through out your life – it’s been permanently programmed from the moment of conception, and it’s next to impossible to get new software to rewrite existing programs.  I simply cannot agree that a part of your mind was nourished by ideas, images, and input that continue to be necessary for your sustainability today.  It’s my contention that this is a false belief that’s easily revealed as an excuse.  I don’t believe that anyone has to live with the belief that they have programming in their subconscious mind that can’t be rewritten.  I’ll explain my perspective on this issue.

     

    If you’re the way you are because of something that’s subconscious – that is, below your level of waking consciousness- then it’s clearly something you can do nothing about.  You can’t even talk about it, since it is beyond your conscious mind.  For the same reason, you can’t understand it; you can’t challenge it; and, most egregiously, you can’t change or fix it.  How can you fix something that’s totally inaccessible?  It would be like attempting to repair a broken watch that was sealed away in a vault: obviously, you need the combination to enter into that previously inaccessible space.

     

    If something is subconscious and thus automatic, it’s believed that you don’t have a choice in the matter.  And to me, that’s the most regrettable thing about this subconscious model: believing that you don’t have a choice.  The truth, as I see it, is that every thing you think, say, and do is a choice – and you don’t need to think, speak or act as you’ve done for your entire life.  When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses.

     

    Right now, while reading this book, decide to begin choosing instead of excusing.  You can instantly decide to reprogram and direct your life toward the level of happiness, success, and health that you prefer.  (Wayne Dyer)

     

    While reading this book, and I am only in the beginning of it, this affirms what I have walked. 

     

    Did you hear what he was saying, that if you can explain the excuse, you know! 

     

    If you can show me what your excuse is, you know! 

     

    And if you know, than it isn’t hidden and subconscious, but rather you are allowing the excuse to run your world!  You gave up choices for excuses.

     

    This has been nagging at me, of how my sisters and brothers didn’t seem to have a choice. 

     

    What Wayne Dyer is saying is that they have excuses instead of choices. 

     

    This will ride with me forever. 

     

    Knowing that if you can form an excuse, it is no longer in your subconsciousness!  You are aware of what is in your vault, your safe, what you haul out as an excuse.  Amazing!

     

    What power this gives to those who feel they are forever doomed because the childhood environment etc, this will allow you to have power over anything you can label.

     

    If you can label it you can change the label.

     

    I am only on page 22, but so far I find this very insightful.

     

    Imagine trading choices for excuses!

    How powerless that even sounds.

     

    It just seemed so off balance that some have choices and others don’t, this really evens the playing field, an equal opportunity for all.

     

    It takes away the excuse of excuses.

     

    Here is the definition, for of course I had to look it up.

    -forgive something: to release somebody from blame or criticism for a mistake or wrongdoing

    – overlook something: to make allowances for somebody or something

    – release somebody from obligation: to release somebody from an obligation or responsibility

     

    When I read the definition and applied it to what Wayne Dyer is writing about, the excuse is not for the other person, it is for you.

     

    It allows you to be powerless, choice less, which equals to hopeless and helpless.  

     

    If all knew that excuses were so self-defeating, I am sure no one would utter one again. 

     

    To use an excuse is to show how weak you are.  Imagine that.

     

    I will have to watch how often I use an excuse instead of having the will of choice.

     

    Will of choice, it surely will take will to erase the excuse.

  • Where it is you want to go!

    One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.  “Which road do I take?” she asked.  His response was a question: “Where do you want to go?”  

    “I don’t know,” Alice answered.

    “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

            Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

     

    I read that in the book “8th Habit,” the chapter on Pathfinding.

     

    My brother and I both noticed how the cat isn’t concerned where Alice is going, is simply asking.

     

    As I tentatively join in conversation with my sister, I am like the cat, wondering where it is she wants to go.

     

    I fact my last message included that paragraph and the following simple questions, “Do you know what you want in your life?”

    I took the road less traveled.
    Which road are you interested in?

     

    I am Like the Cat in the tree, if you don't know where you want to go, I can't tell you which road to take.

    It can’t matter enough to me which road you take or which one you don’t travel, it is and always has been up to you.

    My preferences are not factored in.

     

    I guess before we head out or pack our bags we have to know which way we are heading. 

     

    Where is it you are wanting to go?

    Do we know?

    Did we come with a blueprint?

    How do we know we are on the right path?

    How many forks are there?

     

    I heard on a movie last night that there are really only a handful of meaningful days in our lives, days that will make all the difference in our lives.

     

    They could also be called pivotal moments.

     

    Some days hold forks in the road, and depending upon where it is you are heading, you will pick one.

     

    May you hear your voice as you approach those forks, may you have the courage to step boldly and with purpose, may you know where it is you want to go!

     

     

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  • Come Dance With Me!

    “Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all its many forms.  Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.”

              Buddhist sutra

     

    Dwell peacefully in change.  We are certainly not taught to embrace change, to actually expect change, instead it seems that we struggle to stop change, always.

     

    The seasons are switching outside, and the leaves are changing color, leaving the living world for the world of decay.  As winter is being born, fall is dying.

     

    “If we had the patience and a high-powered microscope, we could sit and stare at our hands and watch the river of change flowing through our own bodies right now.  We could watch our cells changing and dying and being replaced, over and over and over.  From year to year, every one of our cells is replaced.  Literally, who we were yesterday is not who we are today.  Our skin is new every month, our liver every six weeks. When we inhale, we breathe in elements from other organisms to create new cells, and when we exhale, we send parts ourselves out into the atmosphere – into the living, breathing universe.  “All of us,” writes Deepak Chopra, “are much more like a river than anything frozen in time and space.” (Broken Open)

     

    Imagine, we are not frozen in time, yet how often do we feel we must capture this moment, take prisoner this age, or hold tighter this stage, instead of holding the value of change.

     

    The value in change is that we have to enjoy what we have when we have it, to treasure each morsel as it fleetingly rushes by, yet open to the new rushing in.

    Never holding to tightly or failing to appreciate what is here right now, and knowing when to release.

     

    That is a talent that babies and perhaps dogs have.

     

    I am slowly but surely learning how to do this, how to be at peace with change, to fully enjoy the moment and then let it go away.

     

    To be in the flow of change, instead of trying to be the stopper of change, if that were even possible!

     

    I think the river of life rushes by you, as you are the stopper person, that life simply goes around while you are standing still, it refuses to comply with your stopping.

     

    We can sit down and hold on to fall in our minds, but winter will come in anyway, tossing snow and frigid temperatures in our faces never asking our permission.

     

    I read a poem that describes God in four words, “Come dance with Me!”

     

    Come dance with me as winter, come dance with me as fall, come dance with me as summer, as youth, as old age, in sickness and in health, we join God in all His wonderful disguises.

     

    Come dance with Me!

     

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    Not the God of Names,

    Nor the God of don’ts,

    Nor the God who ever does

    Anything weird,

    But the God who only knows four words

    And keeps repeating them, saying:

    “Come dance with Me.”

           Sufi poet Hafiz

     

     

  • Surrender to the Truth.

    “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.  In those choices lies our growth and our happiness.”

     

    This quote is in Stephen R Covey’s book “8th Habit.”

     

    He goes on to write,

     

    With many who have grown up with unconditional love in supportive circumstances, the space may be very large.  With others, due to various genetic and environmental influences, it may be very small.  But the key point is, there is still a space there and it is in the use of that space that the opportunity to enlarge it exists.  Some with very large space, when facing adverse circumstances, may choose to cave in, thereby reducing the size of the space between stimulus and response.  Others with a small space may swim upstream against powerful genetic, social and cultural currents and find their freedom expanding, their growth accelerating and their happiness deepening.  The former simply do no open this most priceless of all birthday gifts.  Gradually, they become a function more of their conditions than their decisions.  The latter, perhaps stumblingly and with great sustained effort, open this priceless gift of freedom to choose and discover the force that releases almost all of the other gifts given at birth.

     

    The maverick psychiatrist R. D. Laing captured in the words below how failing to notice that we have this space kills our ability to change.  Humans alone have self-awareness.  Read, think about, and then reread this quotation:

     

    “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.  And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

     

    An awareness of our freedom and power to choose is affirming because it can excite our sense of possibility, and potential.  It can also threaten, even terrify, because suddenly we’re responsible, that is ‘re-sponse-able.”  We become accountable.  If we have taken shelter over the years in explaining our situation, and problems in the name of past or present circumstances, it is truly terrifying to think otherwise.  Suddenly there is no excuse.

     

    I am rereading this book, and this is the part that caught my attention the first time around.  It filled me with hope that I could stretch and grow that space between stimulus and response, and that I too would have enough space to remember myself.

     

    The other part I loved was the part that we “failed to notice, we failed to notice.”

     

    My sister in her last message to me suggested that she is seeing a different mother.  Perhaps she is seeing what she failed to notice before.

     

    Just because we fail to notice, doesn’t mean that the truth wasn’t always there to notice, but for some reason, perhaps survival, we failed to notice, we failed to notice.

     

    What then do you do with a ‘different’ mother?  What steps are you being asked to take, what happens if you take none?

     

    What I believe happens if you begin to take that one step, is that the space will open wider and wider for more steps and more choices, without taking one step, the space gets smaller.

     

    I didn’t know that it gets smaller, that it shrinks, but also so do you.  You become less and less of who you are.

     

    I know how difficult it is to make a change, to step out and do one thing differently, but I also can feel the death of self in the no choice mode.

     

    Isn’t it odd that he uses the word ‘taking shelter’ in the failing to notice, but once you do, all excuses fall down!

     

    My sister is standing there trying to decide what kind of mother she is holding in her heart and hands? 

     

    What will she see?

    Do you see what I see?

     

    That moment in time, where you look down and see what kind of mother you really have, it is not a pretty sight.

     

    It rips through you with such speed and anguish it leaves you forever changed. 

     

    The rapid tumbling of emotions and knowing create a torrent of thoughts, past and future slamming into each other each claiming to be the truth, you get left in a place of great distress and unknown, in a very doubtful mind, a messy and confused mind.

     

    For if you didn’t see who your mother really was, then who are you?  What else did you fail to notice, what other choices did you blindly make, what parts of your world is really real and how much else is a scam?

     

    It seems to me it is the first block to shatter, the first piece of the flimsily held puzzle, it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was the one missing link, to see a mother who can’t see you.

     

    My first piece was to see my father, but in close succession behind him she fell, and then my whole life was like cascading dominos fell crashing upon each other.

     

    She is either standing there trying to keep the first domino from falling or lying beneath the rubble.

     

    The first domino is shaking, wobbling and tilting, what will she do?  Will she prop it up and hold on to it, or will she be too tired and let it all go?

     

    I am waiting for her next move, it is hers to decide and she alone is the one standing with her heart and hands holding the mother domino upright.

     

    Why is it the child who has to let go, why do we have to be the ones to walk away, to ask for space, to be the ones to face the truth?  It seems too much to ask.

     

    A child stands hands and heart holding, knowing when she lets go, the mother will fall, what strength it takes to let go!

     

    Surrender seems such a gentle word, unless you have to surrender to the truth.

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